Hard to look past it...

Up at the crack of dawn and we were cycling off on our hired bikes. Amsterdam is amazing for cycling, as anyone who has been here will know, more bicycle lanes than car lanes and access all areas! Its so flat as well, cycling was a pleasure. We loved it.So we parked our lovely old bikes near Haarlem and strolled around the city. It is very lovely, tall houses on tree lined streets, canals running every which way and wonderful house boats.
I was enamoured with Amsterdam, couldn't breathe it all in fast enough, it is just so pretty.

That is until you take a wrong turn and end up seeing Amsterdams main attraction. I have to say I've thought long and hard about this and the red light district is something the dutch should be ashamed off. In my naivete, before I came, I thought that the legality of prostitution and drugs here would mean that they were encorporated into normal life. I thought that you would just come across a dark burlesque window of sorts, where beautiful women (from what I'd been told) were coquettishly tempting passers by... I thought that the coffee shops would be what they said on the tin, but also on the menu, if you were into that sort of thing, would be some cigarettes of the gigglyweed variety...
Instead we found ourselves in a hell hole. Cheap tacky coffee shops decorated with drug paraphenalia... Low garish pvc doors lined the alleys, with unhealthy unhappy girls, wearing their underwear, ludely and rawkishly challenging passing men to come in. Porn shops and sex shops showed their wares by confronting you with the worst of it as loudly and brightly as possible (Marys eyes were strictly on her shoes for all of this!) and stag party after stag party lingered, egging each other on to "have a go, mate"...

I have never been anything but completely against the exploitation of women, in any sense, yet I had always thought prostitution being illegal was silly. I thought Holland had it right, decriminalise it, take it above the ground, and make it safe for people to do.
But it doesn't work - it becomes more seedy than it was. Putting a girl for sale in a window makes her nothing but a thing, no matter who does the putting, a pimp or her own volition. Prostitution is the oldest profession, or so they say, it should have a bit more respect than the Netherlands affords it.

At first I thought Amsterdam was lovely, a pretty little place with intelligence and class... then I realised she has her cheap knickers round her ankles, offering her heart and her soul to tourists for a dollar...